


The Fall That Kills You

by Haberdasher



Series: Statement Fics [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Acrophobia, Broken Bones, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Inspired by Real Events, Original Character(s), Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), POV Original Character, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26414326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: Statement of Matthew Gordon regarding his fear of heights and the aftermath of breaking his leg. Semi-autobiographical.(Alternate title: I Warned You About Stairs Bro)
Series: Statement Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026159
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	The Fall That Kills You

Statement of Matthew Gordon regarding his fear of heights and the aftermath of breaking his leg. Original statement given December 30, 2016. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

I’ve been afraid of heights ever since I can remember. I think the story is that when I was two or three my parents took me on a plane ride that had a really rocky landing for some reason. I don’t remember the landing itself, though, at least not consciously, though the fear’s still there. It started as sort of a general fear of heights, but over the years it turned into more specifically a fear of falling.

I maintain that fear of heights, and specifically fear of falling, is one of the more rational common fears out there. People fear snakes, but they usually won’t go after you unless you provoke them; people fear spiders, but the amount of people killed by them annually is low enough to be a rounding error; people fear getting ambushed by a random murderer, but despite what you see on the news, the odds of that happening are slim to none. Falls, on the other hand, kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, but most people ignore that for some reason--maybe because it’s mostly the elderly who go that way, maybe because that just isn’t as exciting as getting stabbed by a serial killer or bitten by a wild animal.

When I’d explain my fear of heights, even before my accident, I tended to use the example of stairs. Planes don’t bother me anymore, even though they were the initial seed of my fear--hell, I sat in the window seat on the way over here, and the view from it more interested than frightened me. But the rickety wooden stairs at my local swimming pool? Those were what always scared me. I think it’s the lack of feeling supported that does it. On a plane, you feel like you’re on the ground, even though logically you know better; on those stairs, with no handrail and only flimsy, shifting wood standing between you and a nasty fall, you’re all too aware of the danger.

It wasn’t the rickety wooden stairs of my local pool that got me, though. It was the stairs in my own home.

The funny thing is, I still don’t know what caused me to fall that morning, though I’ve run through the events in my head over and over. I was rushing a bit, as I was late for a doctor’s appointment, but that doesn’t seem like it should have been enough to make me fall. There was nothing on the stairs to trip me up, I didn’t miss a stair, I’ve been up and down that set of stairs hundreds of times over the years, and yet, one moment I was going down the stairs just fine and the next I was on the ground, with my leg in pain and refusing to support my weight, though I didn’t know for sure it was broken until the doctors told me so.

I don’t even remember the fall itself, really, though I know I must have turned mid-fall, perhaps to grab a handrail--that’s what made it such a nasty break, apparently. Broke my leg in two places just going down my stairs at home, and I was only about four from the bottom when I fell. And that twist mid-fall made it what’s called a spiral fracture, I guess, though I don’t know many details beyond that. I’m not usually the squeamish sort, normally I’d be all over details like that, but I suppose it’s different when it’s _your_ leg that’s broken.

I’d never broken a bone before, and this one required surgery to put metal in my leg--always fun when going through security, that--and then a month sitting around doing nothing, stuck on the first floor of my house, another month of physical therapy... but this isn’t really about that. It’s about what came after.

Once I could go up and down stairs again, every time I prepared to go downstairs, I’d get this vivid mental image of me falling down the stairs, head over heels, until I’d collapsed in a heap at the bottom. Which isn’t even how my fall happened, but that doesn’t stop my brain from imagining it just the same. I go down stairs extra slow now, and I always feel like I have to work at it, to make a choice not to fall like that, every single time. I don’t know what difference that choice makes--after all, it’s not like I chose to fall in the first place--but I always have to say, no, I’m not falling today, not this time.

And then there were the dreams. I’m sure you’re rolling your eyes at this bit, but I don’t think it’s normal, even with trauma, for dreams to work like they did here.

It started with weeks where the only thing I’d dream of was falling. Not falling down the stairs, specifically, just... falling. Not sure where, not sure when, not sure of much of anything besides the wind pushing against me and that plummeting feeling deep in my stomach.

Then I started to go back to normal dreams, but they were all nightmares--some dramatic, boogie monsters and such, but more were mundane, failing a test in high school despite having graduated or turning up to a job interview and realizing I’m stark naked or... well. You get the picture, I trust.

But then midway through those nightmares, I would start falling. I wouldn’t trip, wouldn’t fall _over_ anything, no cliffs or ledges or stairs, just the ground giving out beneath me and falling until the details of the original nightmare were just twinkles far, far in the distance behind me.

And I don’t lucid dream, exactly, don’t know that I’m dreaming when I am or that none of what I’m experiencing in my dreams is actually real, but I’d usually be lucid enough to recognize that this meant whatever nightmare I was in before was over, that I’d just be falling for a while now. And falling isn’t pleasant, exactly, but I wouldn’t call it a nightmare, not like the bad dreams it interrupts. It doesn’t kill you, doesn’t hurt you, doesn’t harm you in any way really. 

After all, as the old saying goes, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.

And the only stop in those dreams is when I wake up. Before that, I can’t even see the ground below me, let alone hit it.

You’re probably thinking I’m wasting your time, and honestly, I can’t entirely blame you for that. I am sort of killing time in a way--my kid brother Nicky studied abroad in Moscow, we turned it into an excuse for a big family trip to Europe, and now I’m here while Nicky and my parents are at... some famous garden or another. I’ve never been big on gardens. All that hard work and effort, put into something that won’t even last the year. Hardly worth getting dirt under your nails for that.

Talking about it’s helped, I think. It seems a bit more real, now that I’m writing it all down. I’m not sure if that should be reassuring, but it is, somehow.

After I finish up here and the rest of the family finishes up at the garden, we’re meeting up at the London Eye. Nicky’s been teasing me about it for the last couple days, asking if I’ll pass out or have a panic attack or something at the top--he’s always been a bit cavalier about my fear of heights, maybe because he wasn’t around for that plane landing that sparked it in the first place. And I’m a little afraid, maybe, but not for the reasons he thinks.

I haven’t been anywhere higher than a couple stories since breaking my leg. There’s the plane, I guess, but that’s different. Staring down at the ground from thirty thousand feet, everything’s more an abstraction than a real landscape, if you can see it at all past the clouds. Ferris wheels aren’t like that, though. The ground is the ground, just further away than normal.

And this whole trip has felt a little bit unreal from the start. I’d never been to another country before this, let alone an entirely different continent, and here we are, waltzing from one foreign nation to the next. And we’ve had more than our fair share of difficulties along the way--hotel bookings that fell through, unfriendly locals, struggles to navigate unknown public transit systems, getting to major attractions right as they close...

I guess I just... hope that this isn’t just another elaborate nightmare, hope that the ground’s still there at the end of the Ferris wheel ride, hope that I don’t start falling again.

Or if I do start falling, I suppose I’d just hope that I don’t _stop_.

Statement ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding what is and isn't real here: Basically, the fear of heights and broken leg, as well as the details given about both, are entirely real. Me envisioning myself falling down the stairs before I go down them is also real, though I may have exaggerated the vividness and consistency of such thoughts. The dreams are entirely made-up.
> 
> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


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